Just like someone mentioned before: do everything backwards from what you've learned... not really, but honestly if you've amassed gardening know-how up north, you might as well chuck most of that knowledge in the "doesn't apply here" bin and listen to the folks on this forum. Gardening in AZ is extremely different from gardening up north. one thing to always remember: If the label on a plant at Home Depot or Walmart says "Full Sun", in most cases that translates to "morning sun, afternoon shade". There are not a whole lot of plants that can thrive in our full sun although there are some good ones. The winters here still do get cold enough at times that we can't grow tropicals without protection. Yeah we don't get too many freezes, but we do get them from time to time, so things like avocados, bananas, mango, are a challenge here. There are a few things you can grow in the summer, but your main gardening seasons will be spring and fall. I'm mostly an edibles gardener so my post will reflect that. In the summer I've had good luck with Armenian cucumbers, Okra, Cantaloupe and Watermelons (they use a lot of water, but they love the heat). Corn is supposed to also do ok in the summer, but I haven't tried that yet. In the fall you can do a lot of things. Since the growing season is fairly short so you need to go with short season varieties. Winter is one of my favorites for gardening here. That's when I do greens. Carrots, Parsley, herbs, Lettuce, Brocolli (It does extremely well here over the winter), peas, spinach...basically all your salad greens. So from about late Oct until around March, you can be swimming in greenery. I was supplying my whole extended family's salad needs most of last winter. The soil here in most places is about the worst soil you could imagine. Mine is hard clay, with caliche that is about as hard as concrete when dry. Some areas have a lot of crushed granite. There are areas with good soil as this used to be an agricultural area. The first thing I would do if I got a plot of land here to garden is I would dig out the soil in some of the areas where I plan on having a garden and get several BIG loads of horse manure and dump it in that area, then let it compost into place. Stuff breaks down fast here IF you keep it moist. BTW, you can get as much horse manure as you want around here for free, there are several places that have horses and they'll load your truck or trailer. In a few years you can develop some decent soil around your property and that will help a lot. I wouldn't bother with bagged "compost" or garden soil and crap like that. I think the quality of that stuff here is terrible and it's not worth the money. The soil here is very alkaline, which means that putting lime or ash on it makes it worse. You want to acidify it if possible by using sulfur. A little vinegar in the water can help temporarily. Also gypsum helps break down the clay. Plants need a good amount of nitrogen here because the heat breaks it down very fast so fruit trees will need to be fertilized at least quarterly. Some of the mineral deficiencies common here are iron and zinc defficiency. If you acidify your soil a little, it helps quite a bit. For iron, I don't like ironite, but chelated iron seems to work much better. Some fruit trees that do well here would be most of your citruses, dates, figs (very nice for ornamental and shade purposses as well), pommegranates are a piece of cake here. Peaches and nectarines will do ok too. A few varieties of grapes (especially Thompson seedless) do extremely well here if they get some afternoon shade. One of your biggest challenges will be birds, insects and diseases. Ants (particularly fire ants) will make you really really hate Arizona at times. I hate the nasty SOBs. Pest problems develop very FAST here, and you need to address them early. Some things have easy organic solutions, like for grape leaf skeletonizers you can spray them with BT which is safe (not poisonous) and they'll be gone. Other problems like white flies can be really hard to get rid of without pesticides and they can get inflict some serious damage if they get out of control. In my opinion, here you get several years's worth of plant growth in one year (I'd say in some cases about 3 yrs worth) and that translates into a LOT of work. pruning, digging up weeds...etc. A good thing to know here is that in AZ they encourage people to recycle their graywater by using it on ornamentals. I changed the plumbing in part of my house to allow my bathwater to go to my shade trees. Water is not cheap here, and if you're going to garden, it's going to be a precious commodity. For shade trees there are a lot of choices but I've fallen in love with Sissoo. Fast growing, not messy, can handle some drought, looks beautiful.

There's nothing quite as cool-looking(temperaturewise) as BLUE flowers. I grew Phacelia a few years ago, best blue i ever saw, next to cornflowers. The bell-shaped blue flowers with icy-white anthers were beautiful, and stirred up images of cooler weather. They do have a short bloom time, hot weather just about stops the show, cutting back helps somewhat. Give 'em a try, i believe there are 2 or 3 varieties. Good luck, and enjoy.

I don't know if it is possible...but putting up an elk fence of 8' plus might be the only way of actually getting the produce from your garden and also being able to grow the perennials that you like. Around here, for the deer, I own a dog, but also spray with an egg mixture. The protein in the egg is what deters the deer. So, whip the egg and add it to a 4 litre jug of water. Shake and spray on your plants. This has to be reapplied after a rain as it washes off the plants. Some people add all kinds of other things to the egg solution which are not necessary like garlic, cayenne pepper, etc etc.as it is the protein in the egg that deters the deer. In raised beds you will have to plant the perennials away from the edge, only planting the hardiest of the hardiest close to the edge. As you are so far north, I wonder if all the same plants that I sent to one of the Far North gardeners who lives in Thompson, Manitoba would also do just fine at your place. I sent her Siberian irises, miniature SDB and MDB irises, hens and chicks, Crater Lake Blue veronica and some creeping sedums. Peonies should do just fine for you there, although you will need more than a few inches of soil for them. For daylilies try to get more of the dormant diploids or the tetraploid diploids, maybe semievergreen....but generally stay away from the tetraploid evergreen ones as they like warmer temps. There again...deer love daylilies! Deer also love delphiniums...which I can attest to. If you are wanting to grow delphiniums try the New Millenium series as they are generally shorter, have a much sturdier stem and have many more flowers on the stems than the Pacific Giants. So, if you are going to grow any delphiniums, start with the New Millenium ones. Hope that this helps. Brenda

Mark- I live in Pacifica. My full time gig is in Menlo Park, but I work all over the area. I get almost all the outdoor wood from Empire Lumber in Belmont. Mike always gives me good prices and the pick of the stack. Hardwood and specialty ply- I buy from Aura in San Jose. You're right about the quality of all Redwood these days, It's nothing like the old growth stuff. I found an old 4x4 Redwood post the other day, and was cutting it for kindling. I couldn't believe the rings! They were too fine to even count. I polished the surface with a razor blade to bring out the grain. Then I got a magnifying glass and started counting. There are about 300 rings on that 4x4! There is a stretch in the middle that appears to represent a drought that lasted for over 100 years, with a pattern of 10 to 20 years of almost no growth interspersed with one or two years of significant growth. What an amazing record of natural history an old redwood tree holds! Compare that to a redwood 4x4 at a box store with only about 10 rings in the cross section. The new Redwood does not have anywhere close to the same rot resistance. The 4x4 with 300 rings will last about 30 times longer without rotting. I think tree farming is a waste of the environment just like cutting old growth. The wood is crap, the habitat is worthless, and the energy used to harvest the wood over and over is a bad deal on the environment. How many acres of tree farmed redwood does it take to equal one old growth tree? The tree farm land will never becaom a mature forest habitat. The 1,000 year old tree has wood that will last for 50 years or more. The tree farmed tree takes 30 years to grow, but the wood only lasts 10 years. I never source wood from Home Depot. Like I mentioned, sometimes I'll get onesies or twosies from the Home Depot Pro in Daly City, if we end up short. Most of the lumber and sheet goods there are a total joke.